Surveillance Cities

What do smarter cities mean for individual privacy, and what should be done? Peter Madden OBE writes on 'Surveillance Cities' in the Huffington Post. (This article originally appeared here: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/surveillance-cities_uk_5a2db64fe4b022ec613b83dd )

Is privacy dead as a concept, and should I care? I asked myself this as I stepped from the gaze of multiple CCTV cameras, touched in with my Oyster card, and picked up the Tube wifi, all the while following a route provided by the navigation-App, CityMapper.

These data trails that we leave as we traverse the city are incredibly useful for transport planners. By understanding how we really move, transport providers can make the system better for everyone.

But of course, all the tools used to create smart cities, such as sensors, cameras, geo-tracking, pattern recognition and predictive analytics, are precisely what the police and security services use to detect – and prevent – wrongdoing. They can easily become tools of surveillance and identification.

So, should we simply accept that we are being constantly tracked, quantified and analysed in the interests of making our cities better and safer? Or should we worry that we are heading recklessly into a world that is part ‘Big Brother’, part ‘Minority Report’?

Certainly, the police are harnessing smart technologies, and becoming ever more sophisticated in their use of data for crime prediction. When I visited the Real Time Crime Centre in New York, I went with a prior vision of the overweight cop, scarfing a donut, while bashing out a report on a typewriter. Instead, I encountered sleek police in a sleek centre, using cutting-edge technology, in real time, to solve crime.

Increasingly, police forces across the world using are data analytics, facial recognition, license plate scanning and so on to understand where crime is most likely to take place, and when. Law enforcement agencies can use these insights to target resources.

There have been protests that the crime algorithms are nothing more than racist profiling, and that the biases in the data methodologies just compound existing inequalities.

There was concern, too, about the traffic and navigation App, WAZE, using crime data to suggest where not to drive. Is this keeping drivers safe, or stigmatizing neighbourhoods? Potentially, this risks hurting businesses, lowering property prices and reinforcing ghettos.

Of course we want criminals to be caught and to feel safe. But one of the attractions of moving to the city used to be the possibility of anonymity. Now, the city is beginning to feel more like a ‘digital panopticon’, with eyes – not just in a central tower - but everywhere around us.

Should individuals be allowed to opt out of the smart city? And is that even possible any more? Whilst we aren’t quite yet at the point of Dave Eggar’s scarily prescient book ‘The Circle’, when Mercer is relentlessly hounded when he tries to go off-grid, it does seem that merely by being an urban citizen and by using services and infrastructure we are consenting to be part of a comprehensive web of tracking and analysis.

Talking to Stefaan Verhulst, Co founder of GovLab, he suggested that the focus should be less on privacy and more on “‘Data responsibility’” We should ask, he said, “How is the data collected? How is it judged? And how is it used? Are the judgements, which can have a big impact on people’s lives, based on evidence and properly informed? Are there inbuilt biases?”

The design studio IF have created a ‘data licence’ that puts people in control of their data, letting them set the rules of engagement. By answering a set of straightforward questions, users customise their data licence to form a contract with the other party.

So maybe this is the deal: that we accept being surveilled and for our data to be used, if there is a payoff in more efficient infrastructure and safer streets, and if we receive certain safeguards.

Personally, I’m OK with being tracked and analysed, if I’m informed that it’s happening. No one likes to feel they’re being spied on. And I’d like my data to be used only for the purpose for which it was gathered, not sold on to multiple other parties. And my data should be appropriately anonymised: if an organisation is counting footfall, it really doesn’t need to know my birthday and postcode.

Most importantly, I don’t want to be reduced to a passive datum. The smart city should be one in which I engage actively as a citizen. As Professor David Harvey argues “The right to the city..is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is…one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”

I think it is inevitable that smart cities will be surveillance cities, but we should ensure that the surveillance is done responsibly, and that citizens can use digital tools to proactively shape that surveillance, and their cities.

Peter Madden, OBE, December 2017

Robots in Cities

What will robots and automation mean for urban life? Peter Madden OBE writes for the Huffington Post on 'Robots in Cities' (This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-madden-obe/robots-in-cities_b_18504346.html )

Robots are coming. What will they mean for urban life? I doubt they'll be the perfections of the human form we see in the Blade Runner films. They'll do particular, specified, tasks very efficiently. They are already common in closed environments - in factories and distribution warehouses. Out on the city street they'll be focused initially on the dirty, dull and dangerous tasks: unblocking drains; monitoring tunnels; cleaning tall buildings. 

As well as maintaining the urban infrastructure, robots will build our cities. As the off-site manufacturing of buildings increases, it will be automated. And on-site, robots may replace the construction worker. In Amsterdam, last year, I saw a metal canal-bridge being 3-D printed. In Dubai, last year, they 3-D printed an office with a cement printer in just 17 days - with a saving of about 50 percent on normal labour costs.

Robots will increasingly shape how people and products move in our cities. There has been a lot of publicity about Amazon's investment in delivery drones in the skies. On the ground, Tesco have also been piloting a delivery robot and Ocado a driverless van. 

The big investment is in the self-driving car. The UK Government wants the country to lead in this technology and is funding on-street trials, with various levels of automation, in cities across the country. Step-by-step, year-by-year, such vehicles will penetrate the market and the city until they'll become the norm within 20 years.

This widespread uptake of autonomous vehicles will re-shape our cities further. With seamless, and instant, on-demand autonomous vehicles, why own a car? Why pay for parking? Why devote so much precious urban real-estate to inanimate metal objects? An MIT study estimated that Singapore could reduce the number or vehicles by two-thirds with full automation. 

These developments will reduce pollution and free-up lots of space in cities. Multi-storey car parks may become urban farms; pocket parks may spring up on empty suburban streets; new housing may replace redundant expressways. 

Autonomous vehicles will also have profound social and economic impacts. What do they mean for taxi-drivers? White van man? Or the school run? As automation changes, or replaces, existing jobs, society will have to adapt fast. 

Of course, artificial intelligence and automation will actually augment many human tasks. Humankind has developed over millennia by developing and using new tools. And the doom-mongers underplay the productivity benefits of augmentation. But the transition will be painful for many. What films like Bladerunner do capture well is the underlying societal angst about the rise of the robot. This angst is already partly underpinning the election of populist politicians across the Western world. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see a surge of 21st Century Ludditism - the modern version of the 18th Century textile workers, who smashed machines to protect jobs. 

As with previous waves of disruptive technologies, new opportunities will, of course, emerge. Just as the desktop publishing revolution that destroyed print-workers' jobs in the 1980s led to a huge increase in productivity and creativity, there will be upsides. And new policies will emerge: robots might be taxed to pay for pensions; universal basic income - like the one being trialled in Finland - might become the norm. But it doesn't feel like politicians or citizens are well equipped to navigate these changes at the moment. Our more automated cities may also be more uncomfortable places to live.

Peter Madden, OBE, November 2017

Tech-Savvy Cities

Do our cities have the people they need to thrive in a tech-enabled future? A number of conversations recently have bought home to me the importance of having smart technology skills in city administrations.

We all know waves of technology change are crashing over us. As VC firm Andreessen Horowitz say, ‘Software programs the world’. As chips continue to drop in price, they will be embedded in everything, and all these things will be networked. Soon, they argue, the whole world will be programmable.

Digital technologies will shape how city administrations interact with citizens, how they deliver services, and how they enable new companies to grow. City leaders I talk to know that this digital future is upon us. But most are still not investing enough in the people and facilities they need to harness these technologies.

Of course, there are high profile exceptions. In New York, the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics is a civic intelligence centre that allows the city to aggregate and analyse data from across agencies, to more effectively address crime, public services, and quality of life. In Amsterdam, the redoubtable Ger Baron works as Chief Technology Officer to lead their smart city efforts. While in Singapore, the new GovTech Agency is deploying the Smart Nation Platform to help public agencies deploy sensors, collect data, and use analytics to run the city more efficiently.

But what about the next tier down of cities, the smaller places that don’t have global cachet, that face tough budget cuts, that lack tech-savvy staff, that are fighting to deliver the daily priorities?

A UK government official said to me a while ago: ‘If this is smart agenda is so amazing, cities will do it themselves anyway. They shouldn’t need any central Government support’.

This ignores the fact that there is not a perfect market, with economically rational actors. It ignores the fact that local authorities are often populated at the senior levels with a pre-digital generation. And it ignores the fact that city administrations can’t know what they don’t know.

As Theo Blackwell, London Borough of Camden says in his recent report ‘the Start of the Possible’ local councillors are not ‘digital dinosaurs’. They mostly hold positive views about technology, automation and data and how public services can benefit from them. However, digital is not usually led by the very top decision makers in local councils, and there is thirst for councils to be better supported to understand more about technology and transformation.

If they are left behind, administrations may miss opportunities to proactively shape the future. They will find their cities changed under their noses. Uber will decide how people move, AirBnB will shape the property market, and a myriad of companies will swallow up and profit from the city’s data.

So what should be the response?

First, invest in digital skills. I know local authorities face painful cuts, but digital should be a core part of how they respond and reshape for the future. Recruit a senior person with responsibility, co-opt a trusted advisor, appoint experts to the LEP. London is currently following other global cities in hiring a Chief Digital Officer. Belfast is implementing a Smart Belfast Framework, further investing in its team, and launching a ‘Smart Belfast Collaborative Challenge’ to harness start-up expertise.

Second, share learning and resources. There’s some great sharing of best practice and intelligence already through the Local Government Association, Core Cities Group and the Scottish Cities Alliance. And cities are also starting to share human resource. Twenty-seven Scottish local authorities have joined forces to appoint a chief digital officer and chief technology officer to drive digital transformation. The Greater London Authority and London councils are considering setting up a London Office of Technology and Innovation to co-ordinate their innovation efforts.

Third, universities can help. They are a major employer, a big property developer, a deep well of intellectual capacity, and a source of continuity through perennial changes in city administrations. UK Universities are increasingly engaging in their host cities. Two of the preeminent examples are how Professor Enrico Motta of the Open University helped drive MKSmart in Milton Keynes, and how Mark Tewdr Jones of Newcastle University is galvanising Newcastle City Futures.

Finally, Central Government should act to support capabilities, rather than wait for the market or city collaboration to deliver. If there aren’t people to act as intelligent clients for smart city technology, the private sector won’t solve the problem. And as cities are increasingly asked to compete, there is a risk that the leading players will want to maintain their advantage rather than share. Whitehall could support training, help fund Chief Digital Officers, and more proactively support digital transformation through city deals and further devolution.

For city administrations, investing in digital capability, even in difficult times, will be vital. Harnessed cleverly, new digital technologies can lower a city’s operating costs, protect the environment and improve quality of life both for current residents and for potential incomers.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

Time For A Digital Overhaul Of The Planning System?

Urban planning decides the layout and fabric of our cities. It influences the protection and use of the environment. It shapes how we live our lives.

In many ways the planning system has done a good job: trying to balance competing demands for scarce resources and mediating between economic forces and the views of local communities. And, over the years, it has proved remarkably resilient.

But the system certainly has its flaws - and its critics. Complex language, outdated processes, and professional interests conspire to make the planning process time-consuming, expensive and obscure to outsiders.

Jargon is partly to blame. It helps developers, consultants, planners, infrastructure agencies, and politicians to keep knowledge hidden, or at least privileged, sometimes in order to game the system.

On other occasions, information is simply locked away by those who control it. And much of the time, it’s because planning records are often still on paper, in non-machine readable formats, making them ill-suited to sharing.

Of course, the burying of knowledge isn’t necessarily done on purpose. Planning authorities are bursting at the seams, with boxes full of planning application drawings and supporting documents which are rarely read. Planning officers trawl through drawings measuring the area of flats, or distances between bedrooms; or spend hours deciding on specific sensitive viewpoints that may need assessing to make semi-informed decisions on the impacts of development on a conservation area or listed building.

City administrations still rely on a ‘call for sites’ to estimate the amount of development land available. Developers then scramble over each other offering inflated amounts of money for land and then rely on case officers being over-stretched and poorly informed in order to negotiate affordable housing contributions down to a minimum.

The extent of this problem can be seen by the existence of the online platform ‘Concrete Action’. It allows local authority planners and those working for developers to leak critical and confidential documents, and decodes the planning system for local citizens who want to resist development. It shows what happens when professional gatekeepers and industry players hide their knowledge behind walls: people try to break them down.

The fact that the planning system remains so analogue and un-transparent contributes to the poor functioning of the land and development market, and creates high barriers to entry. This makes it difficult for challengers and disruptors who would encourage competition and boost effectiveness.

So, what we need, is a new way to plan. When we consider how big data, artificial intelligence, and visualisation have transformed the way we process and interpret information, isn’t it time for PlanTech to follow FinTech, GovTech and PropTech?

The potential is huge, and some technologies are already in use. Sensors, for example, are being deployed to collect data on how people are using cities. This means real-time data on the number of homes built and how they’re occupied, the extent to which streets are overcrowded, how often car parking spaces are being used, or the popularity of parks, can all be quantified and measured.

Agent-based modelling technology is giving us the ability to create significantly more complex models taking into account population demographics, land market, transport and social infrastructure and even cultural trends, which can all be modelled simultaneously. And the application of Building Information Modellling (BIM) to understand neighbourhoods and whole cities will only enrich this.

At the same time, virtual, mixed and augmented reality allow us to easily build virtual models of our cities to explore the impacts of development on our skylines or daylight hours, and experience the resulting design of our streets and spaces. This will make it cheaper and easier to consult and optimise before anything is built.

Or course, progressive local authorities are already working on this. Talking to city officials over recent weeks from Hackney, Newcastle and Plymouth I’ve been really impressed by the drive and creativity they are bringing to changing the planning system.

And there are some great SMEs, too, in this space. Commonplace offers an online consultation platform. Land Insight makes it easier to search for land. Space Syntax models the impacts of planning on human behaviour. And Toolz is creating a custom-made 3D interface to allow planning officers to assess development proposals within a live 3D model of the city.

My organisation, Future Cities Catapult, is also investing in innovations for a more transparent, data-driven and digitally-enabled system. And as part of the upcoming London Tech Week, we’re hosting a range of PlanTech events from our Urban Innovation Centre in Clerkenwell, where we’ll be showcasing the best in class and hosting a number of free talks on the subject.

A hundred years after the first Housing and Town Planning Acts, it is surely time to harness 21st Century tools and technologies to create a better planning system?

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.